


The Search for the Knight

by Eloisa



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-05
Updated: 2012-06-05
Packaged: 2017-11-07 00:14:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/424769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eloisa/pseuds/Eloisa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the Harrenhal tourney fails to run as planned, King Aerys gives his heir a seemingly impossible task to fulfil.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Search for the Knight

Grass-scent blew off the Harrenhal meadows in the cool spring breeze.  Rhaegar Targaryen sat straight-backed in his destrier’s saddle, waiting in silence and slowly inhaling the crisp green air that wafted to him over the sharp tang of steel and the stink of horse.

Morgaine was too well-trained to move beneath him, but his tail twitched every few minutes, and he occasionally nickered to Ser Arthur Dayne’s grey destrier, waiting just as patiently outside the other champion’s pavilion.

The heralds raised their trumpets for a second time and blew another fanfare.  Rhaegar peered sideways through his visor-slits at the rows and rows of brightly bannered awnings and, in the very centre of the tilt, his father’s grand chair.  King Aerys was fuming beneath his long fair beard.  Ser Oswell Whent, standing behind him, had careful eyes on him.

Still they all waited.  Now the crowd was beginning to stir.  The trumpets sang for the third time: “That’s enough,” Aerys snapped.  “The man’s not coming.  I knew he was a scoundrel.”

Ser Oswell’s brother Lord Whent scurried to the king’s side and bowed.  “Your Grace, I am most profoundly –”

“Oh, stop that.  What could your imbecilic stewards have done?”  The king straightened and beckoned towards the champions’ pavilions.  “Rhaegar.”

The prince removed his black helm and cantered to his father’s seat.  He bowed deeply in his saddle.  “Your Grace?”

“I want that ‘knight’ found.  Nobody else is like to do it.”  Aerys waved grandiosely in the direction of the main encampment.  “Go, ser, and do not return until you have found him.”

“At once, your Grace,” Rhaegar answered.  But as he rode away he wondered, _how am I to do that?_

The commons crowd behind the far rail started talking like a flock of seagulls.  In the stands, highborn men and women called for refreshment or delicately absented themselves.  Ser Arthur greeted him outside his own lilac-striped pavilion.  “Do we have a delay?”

“Maybe a long one.”  The Sword of the Morning wrinkled his nose, dismounted and handed his reins to his groom.  The tall, fair man – some sort of baseborn Dayne – began to walk the great grey warhorse back and forth.

_Ah._

Rhaegar dismounted and tossed his reins to his under-groom.  He beckoned his head groom Tallock towards him.  “Go around all the knights’ encampments,” he instructed the man.  “Speak to every groom in every retinue.  Ask if any of them recognised the Knight of the Laughing Tree’s _horse_ – and try to identify the one who lies when he denies it.”

***

Ser Boros Blount was a knight in the prime of his life, in the best jousting form of his life, and considerably richer than he had thought he would be when the Knight of the Laughing Tree unseated him in the tilt.  Rhaegar listened to him expound theories about the Knight’s identity with a carefully chosen sympathetic smile on his face.  He nodded or made encouraging noises from time to time.

“You’d think the man must be –”  Ser Boros looked down at his boots.  “Some sort of _eccentric_.  He could have taken home a fortune from our ransoms.”  He shook his dark head.  The porcupines on his surcoat bristled.  “I don’t understand it.”

“The business with your squire certainly seems evidence of eccentricity.”

Ser Boros nodded vigorously.  “Exactly, my prince.  I spoke with Tevor most sharply – but all boys commit pranks!  Some business with a dog, and an encounter with Lady Manderly’s maid – I ask you.”

“It does seem most odd.”  Rhaegar watched the shorter, squarer knight.  “Few would censure him for that – and none at all for the misunderstanding with the crannogman.”

He hadn’t been certain, but both Ser Hosteen Frey and Ser Periver Haigh had mentioned the tale, and saw at once that he was not wrong.  Ser Boros hissed through his teeth and shook his head.  “A young highborn who dresses as a commoner and attacks any innocent squire who asks him his business – it’s practically a scandal in itself.  And then the little toad goes and sits in the Starks’ pockets all week!  Well, he is their bannerman, but still...”

“Frog,” corrected Rhaegar absently.

“I beg your pardon, my prince?”

“It’s frogs that come from the Neck, I believe.  Toads come from the... crownlands.”  He focused on Ser Boros again.  “Thank you, ser.  You’ve been most helpful.”  Ser Boros bowed and muttered inarticulately: Rhaegar walked away, deep in thought.

He had no doubt that Ser Boros was mistaken about the nature of the encounter between crannogman and squires.  The other knights had related similar tales of injustice, also carrying the same undertone of falsehood.  To crown it, Tallock thought the Starks’ master of horse might possibly have recognised the Knight’s horse.

However, Rhaegar had never met a crannogman who could joust better than a ten-year-old squire, nor even one who could ride better than a girl of the same age.

He stopped on the edge of the latest row of pavilions.  In his reverie he had reached the edge of the great encampment.  Ahead lay the godswood.  Its feral silence seemed to well into the hum of the camp behind him.

On a whim, Rhaegar followed the light trail ahead of him deeper into the forest.  The Knight’s sigil had been a weirwood.  He had a sudden desire to see the Harrenhal heart tree.

Every forest he’d ever seen, from the kingswood to the smallest copse, hid dozens of birds that chirped from trees and small animals that rustled in the grass.  Not so this godswood.  Occasional gusts of wind whistled through branches, and he once heard a bird’s cry half a league away, but nothing else bar his own footsteps broke the eerie silence.  That and the –

_whispering?_

Rhaegar ducked under another branch, detangled his long hair from a twig and stopped.  He was on the edge of a clearing.  Opposite him loomed the heart tree, a great weirwood as tall as the Sept of Baelor, flanked by a pair of oaks almost as majestic.  _Heart of oak are our ships_ , Rhaegar thought irrelevantly – _the sailors’ old ballad_.

A woman stood under the weirwood.

She had her back to him.  Through the trailing red leaves he saw a slender figure of medium height, gowned in white, her hair bound in a silver net, staring up into the heart tree’s branches.  He heard her whisper something.  What, he could not tell.

Rhaegar pushed aside the last branch and strode into the clearing.  Fallen twigs snapped under his booted feet.  The woman squeaked and swung round in a whirl of silk.

She was no woman grown, but a maiden of fourteen or fifteen years, shining with all the glory of youth.  _This is the face the bards truly sing of_ , he thought, _when they endlessly resurrect Jonquil and Jenny._

 “Lady Lyanna,” he recalled, bowing.  She dropped a hasty curtsey in response.  “Might I ask your purpose in venturing so deep into the godswood alone?”

 “I was praying.”  She gestured to the heart tree.  “These are my gods.”

“Praying for my success?”  Rhaegar slowly walked forwards and stared into the weirwood’s branches.  “Well, I appear to have found the Knight of the Laughing Tree.”

 He stretched upwards and tugged at a familiar shape.  The Knight’s shield tumbled into his arms.  Lyanna Stark did not speak.  Rhaegar peered higher into the tree.  A definite dark shape – “Come down, ser.  I will not harm you.”

 “I’m not a ser, your Grace.”  A wiry boy slithered down the tree trunk and jumped to the ground at Rhaegar’s feet.  He had much the look of Lyanna: dark hair, slender face and form, grey eyes.  He bowed.  “I’m Benjen Stark.”

 Rhaegar studied the shield and then looked at the two northeners again.  “There is no shame for a boy of – thirteen or so – to be unmasked as a mystery knight in a tourney.  Ser Barristan Selmy donned unmarked armour to tilt against my great-uncle Duncan when he was barely ten.”  Neither Stark answered.  “Which suggests to me,” the Prince of Dragonstone pursued, “that Benjen Stark cannot have been the Knight of the Laughing Tree – any more than can his friend, the crannogman Reed.”

 He looked Lyanna Stark in the eyes again.  Resolute, fearless, beautiful eyes.  _Folk say the Starks are made of ice.  This one – this one has fire inside._


End file.
